acts a longer or shorter time may be allowed to pafs, and that no more account of space or duration is to be taken by the auditor of a drama, than by the reader of a narrative, before whom may pass in an hour the life of a hero, or the revolutions of an empire.

Whether Shakespeare knew the unities, and rejected them by defign, or deviated from them by happy ignorance, it is, I think, impoffible to decide, and useless to enquire. We may reasonably suppose, that, when he rose to notice, he did not want the counfels and admonitions of fcholars and criticks, and that he at last deliberately perfifted in a practice, which he might have begun by chance. As nothing is effential to the fable but unity of action, and as the unities of time and place arife evidently from falfe affumptions, and, by circumfcribing the extent of the drama, leffen its variety, I cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known by him, or not obferved: nor, if fuch another poet could arife, fhould I very vehemently reproach him, that his first act paffed at Venice, and his next in Cyprus. Such violations of rules merely pofitive become the comprchenfive genius of Shakespeare, and fuch cenfures are fuitable to the minute and flender criticism of Voltaire.

Non ufque adeo permifcuit imis

Longus fumma dies, ut non, fi voce Metelli
Serventur leges, malint a Cæfare tolli.

Yet when I fpeak thus flightly of dramatick rules, I cannot but recollect how much wit and learning! may be produced againft me; before fuch aurhoritics

I am afraid to ftand, not that I think the prefent queftion one of thofe that are to be decided by mere authority, but becaufe it is to be fufpected, that thefe precepts have not been fo eafily received, but for better reafons than I have yet been able to find. The refult of my enquiries, in which it would be ludicrous to boast of impartiality, is, that the unities of time and place are not effential to a juft drama, that though they may fometimes conduce to pleafure, they are always to be facrificed to the nobler beauties of variety and inftruction; and that a play written with nice obfervation of critical rules, is to be contemplated as an elaborate curiofity, as the product of fuperfluous and oftentatious art, by which is fhewn, rather what is poffible, than what is neceflary

He that, without diminution of any other excellence, fhall preferve all the unities unbroken, deferves the like applaufe with the architect, who fhall difplay all the orders of architecture in a citadel, without any deduction from its ftrength: but the principal beauty of a citadel is to exclude the enemy; and the greatest graces of a play are to copy nature, and inftru& life.

Perhaps, what I have here not dogmatically but deliberately written, may recall the principles of the drama to a new examination. I am almoft frighted at my own temerity; and when I eftimate the fame and the ftrength of thofe that maintain the contrary opinion, am ready to fink down in reverential filence; as Eneas withdrew from the defence of Troy, when he faw Neptune fhaking the wall, and Juno heading the befiegers.

Those whom my arguments cannot perfuade to give their approbation to the judgment of Shakespeare, will eafily, if they confider the condition of his life, make fome allowance for his ignorance.

Every man's performances, to be rightly estimated, must be compared with the ftate of the age in which he lived, and with his own particular opportunities; and though to the reader a book be not worse or better for the circumftances of the author, yet as there is always a filent reference of human works to human abilities, and as the enquiry, how far man may extend his defigns, or how high he may rate his native force, is of far greater dignity than in what rank we shall place any particular performance, curiofity is always busy to discover the instruments, as well as to survey the workmanship, to know how much is to be ascribed to original powers, and how much to cafual and adventitious help. The palaces of Peru or Mexico were certainly mean and incommodious habitations, if compared to the houses of European monarchs; yet who could forbear to view them with aftonishment, who remembered that they were built without the use of iron?

The English nation, in the time of Shakespeare, was yet ftruggling to emerge from barbarity. The philology of Italy had been transplanted hither in the reign of Henry the Eighth; and the learned languages had been fuccefsfully cultivated by Lilly, Linacre, and More; by Pole, Cheke, and Gardiner; and afterwards by Smith, Clerk, Haddon, and Afcham. Greek was now taught to boys in the principal fchools; and thofe who united elegance with learning, read, with great diligence, the Italian and

Spanish

Spanish poets. But literature was yet confined to profeffed fcholars, or to men and women of high rank, The publick was grofs and dark; and to be able to read and write, was an accomplishment ftill valued for its rarity.

Nations, like individuals, have their infancy. A people newly awakened to literary curiofity, being yet unacquainted with the true ftate of things, knows not how to judge of that which is propofed as its refemblance. Whatever is remote from common appearances is always welcome to vulgar, as to childish credulity; and of a country unenlightened by learning, the whole people is the vulgar. The study of those who then afpired to plebeian learning was laid out upon adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments. The Death of Arthur was the favourite volume.

The mind, which has feafted on the luxurious wonders of fiction, has no tafte of the infipidity of truth. A play, which imitated only the common occurrences of the world, would, upon the admirers of Palmerin and Guy of Warwick, have made little impreffion; he that wrote for fuch an audience was under the neceffity of looking round for ftrange events and fabulous tranfactions; and that incredibility, by which maturer knowledge is offended, was the chief recommendation of writings, to unfkilful curiofity.

Our author's plots are generally borrowed from novels; and it is reafonable to fuppofe, that he chofe the most popular, fuch as were read by many, and related by more; for his audience could not have followed him through the intricacies of the

drama, had they not held the thread of the ftory in their hands.

The ftories, which we now find only in remoter authors, were in his time acceffible and familiar. The fable of As you like it, which is fuppofed to be copied from Chaucer's Gamelyn, was a little pamphlet of those times; and old Mr. Cibber remembered the tale of Hamlet in plain English profe, which the criticks have now to feek in Saxo Grammaticus.

His English hiftories he took from English chronicles and English ballads; and as the ancient writers. were made known to his countrymen by verfions, they fupplied him with new fubjects; he dilated fome of Plutarch's lives into plays, when they had been tranflated by North.

His plots, whether hiftorical or fabulous, are always crowded with incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was more eafily caught than by fentiment or argumentation; and fuch is the power of the marvellous, even over thofe who defpife it, that every man finds his mind more ftrongly feized by the tragedies of Shakespeare than of any other writer: others pleafe us by particular fpeeches; but he always makes us anxious for the event, and has perhaps excelled all but Homer in fecuring the first purpofe of a writer, by exciting reftlefs and unquenchable curiofity, and compelling him that reads his work to read it through.

The fhows and buftle with which his plays abound have the fame original. As knowledge advances, pleasure paffes from the eye to the ear, but returns, as it declines, from the ear to the eye. Those to whom our author's labours were exhibited had more